Carmen Lomas
Garza’s artwork depicts quotidian family events with vibrant and powerful
details.These are important Chicana
and Chicano cultural moments: dancing in the backyard with un conjunto

"Empanadas" by Carmen Lomas Garza

that
features a female guitarist and singer; a familia coming together in the
kitchen to make empanadas; two sisters up on the roof watching the moon.

Carmen Lomas Garza in front of her papel picado art

Lomas Garza is also known for her papel
picado artwork—equally stunning.This April, Carmen will be coming to the Midwest, to the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, to give a lecture and meet the art students. In the meantime,
I bring her to La Bloga so that if you, Querida or Querido reader have not
heard of her, here’s a chance to get acquainted:(click here for her website).

Jennifer De Leon

Jennifer De Leon
teaches seventh and eighth graders in the Boston public school system.She says in one of her blogs:“I love teaching.I love how one day last week my student
Angel, fourteen, sat slouched in the back of the classroom with his hood on,
immersed in the pages of Drown
(a book I had given him essentially to challenge his claim that all books
sucked), laughing so hard that tears filled his eyes.”(Click here for De Leon’s blog.)

For me, when
I hear the words wise Latina, I immediately think of my mother.She came to the United States at a
young age, alone, speaking no English.Four years passed before she returned to Guatemala with platform shoes,
a new hairstyle of pressed waves, and a black-and-white television as a gift
for the family.Then, she left
again for Los Angeles and eventually Boston, where she married and had three
daughters.All her life my mother
wanted more.She learned English,
became a U.S. citizen, and bought a house.Education, she believed, provided a set of master keys that
unlocked multiple doors—career, monty, travel, health, relationships, even
love.

Through her daughters, she would live the lives she had
imagined for herself, and every one of these included a college education. A Latina housekeeper who drives her
caravan full of daughters to admissions tours at Brown, Alfred, TCU (yes, we
drove to Fort Worth, Texas) . . . We are encouraged to laugh at Latina housekeepers
on sitcoms, to ignore the invisible Latina workers in public restrooms. The term wise Latina continues to
unfold preconceptions and stereotypes of what it is to be wise and what it is
to be Latina.

Another wise Latina, Professor Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, recently received a prestigious award for her book, Unspeakable
Violence:Remapping U.S. and
Mexican National Imaginaries (Duke University Press).The award is
the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) prize in United States Latina and
Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies. Dr. Guidotti-Hernández is currently an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies. “Unspeakable Violence addresses the epistemic and physical violence
inflicted on racialized and gendered subjects in the U.S. – Mexico borderlands
from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth.

published by Duke University Press

[She argues] that
this violence was fundamental to U.S., Mexican, and Chicana/Chicano
nationalisms . . . “ (from the book description). Guidotti-Hernández takes the
reader on a historical journey while also reminding the reader how these
historical markers have shaped our present moment in history.

She deftly connects both while also
calling “for a new, transnational feminist approach to violence, gender, sexuality,
race, and citizenship in the borderlands.” Guidotti-Hernández’s careful
research brings to life moments in the nineteenth-century not previously
examined:the lynching of a
Mexican woman in California (1851), or attempted genocide of the Yaqui Indians
in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands (1876-1907).

We are made of many stories, many lives, many historical
moments, and these women depict these events on canvas and on paper, for us to
view, to see, to consider.

And so, Querida La Bloga reader, I leave you with this
important artwork, these groundbreaking books.

Afterword:I
also leave you with a special note about today, February 2nd.Yes, it’s Groundhog’s Day and maybe by
the time you read this, we shall know if the woolly mammal has seen its
shadow.However, it is also
Candlemas Day—an ancient festival which originally marked the midpoint of
winter:halfway between the
shortest day and the spring equinox. It was known as the “Feast of
Lights”—celebrating the increasing strength of the life-giving sun:winter giving way to spring. Enjoy this
liminal day “in the midst of winter.”Warm wishes to you all!